This invention relates to a shipping carton opening knife, and more particularly to a safety carton knife that protects the user and the carton contents.
A common, everyday activity experienced in most stores, e.g., grocery stores, is the opening of dozens or hundreds of shipping cartons of cardboard or paperboard, i.e., boxes, to remove and stock the product contained therein. The usual technique for opening the cartons is by quickly cutting the cartons with the sharp blade of a knife. Typically this is done by rambunctious teenagers. Unfortunately, there are two all too common detrimental happenings which can occur during this activity. One thing which happens is injury to the person by his/her own knife. Available statistics indicate that the related injuries to store employees can be thousands of dollars per year because of this type of accident. The other occurrence is damage to the product contained in the carton. For example, individual paperboard or plastic packages of food, cereal, clothing, etc. are frequently sliced by the knife. This damage is understood to be in the range of about five billion dollars per year in the U.S.